The present invention relates to a headrest and a vehicle seat provided with the headrest. More particularly, it relates to a headrest that tilts from a head support state in which the headrest is raised with respect to a seat back to a storage state tilted from the head support state by remote control, and a vehicle seat provided with the headrest.
Generally, a headrest for protecting the passenger's head is mounted on the upper part of a seat back of a vehicle seat. Conventionally, there has been publicly known a configuration in which the lower part of a pillar of the headrest is attached to a transverse rod, which extends in the right and left direction in the seat back, so as to be rotatable in the front and rear direction, and the pillar is attached so as to be movable in the right and left direction, whereby the headrest is moved transversely and then is tilted to the rear to be stored (refer to Japanese Unexamined Utility Model Application Publication No. 7-11951).
The publicly known configuration described in Japanese Unexamined Utility Model Application Publication No. 7-11951 is a configuration in which the headrest is moved transversely and then is tilted to the rear to be stored. Therefore, to secure rear visibility, even when the headrest provided on a rear seat is stored, the passenger must operate the headrest directly by hand, which poses a problem of being difficult to use.
To solve such a problem, there has been proposed a technique in which the headrest, which is provided so as to be rotatable with respect to a pillar mounted on the upper part of the seat back, is provided with a tilting mechanism, which is configured so as to have a lock plate attached to the pillar side and a latch attached to the headrest main body side, whereby the headrest can be tilted to the rear by remote control by connecting the lock plate of the tilting mechanism to an electric actuator (refer to Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2005-349915).
The publicly known technique described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2005-349915 is configured so that the headrest tilting mechanism using the electric actuator can be accommodated entirely in the headrest main body, which offers high versatility and operability, and the headrest can be tilted from a head support state to a storage state by remote control. However, to comply with a request for a further decrease in cost, it has been desired to adopt a configuration in which no electric actuator is used.